Lively lava landscape

Annabele Thorpe

Last updated at 14:04 03 May 2007

When you first land at Lanzarote airport, you could be forgiven for thinking the pilot got rather ambitious, and diverted to the moon. The landscape of this Canary Island is unique, a skyline stuffed with volcanoes.

There are vast seas of black rock and lava, of scrub and heathland dotted with whitewashed houses clustered against the severity of the surrounding countryside.

Lanzarote is the land where nature lost its temper, where volcanoes exploded and lava surged through the island for six long years, 250 years ago, and created a landscape little changed, even now. None of this is what Lanzarote is known for, however. Lanzarote is burger bars, black beaches, bargain basement. It's cheap 'n' cheerful, chips 'n' chicken nuggets. For heaven's sake, anywhere whose name rhymes with 'grotty', is doomed before it starts.

Yet this perception, both unfair and roughly accurate, is what makes Lanzarote fascinating. It mixes the incredibly stylish with the insufferably naff; sophisticated architecture and ambitious projects with downmarket, low-rent, high-return developments.

One of the best examples of this is in Costa Teguise, location of the Gran Melia Salinas hotel, one of the island's most luxurious.This is the kind of hotel where chambermaids pop in to puff up your pillows and rearrange your towels every time you leave your room.

Five restaurants within the walls of Gran Melia Salinas and not a chicken nugget for love nor money.Two minutes away, though, you can't get anything but. Across the road from this laid-back luxury sits a huge plastic tent-shape structure, home to Tex-Mex and pizza restaurants, where the bar is in the shape of a large boat, and a two-piece band (who look spookily like the Mitchell brothers) segue effortlessly from Waltzing Matilda into a little light Bach and the sunburnt diners tuck into fajitas and fried chicken.

It is a world away from the tasteful glamour of Gran Melia Salinas - where women in Chanel glide around the dance floor to the salsa tunes and Beatles covers - yet everyone seems to be having an equally good time.

The classy side of Lanzarote is due, largely, to the generous and gifted Cesar Manrique, a Lanzarote-born artist who has been involved in designing most of the tourist attractions on the island. His touch is everywhere - from the subtly curved cafe at the Mirador del Rio, which commands stunning views to the neighbouring islands and across the Atlantic, to the little devil who welcomes you to the Timanfaya National Park; from the caves that can be explored to the cactus garden he created in a disused quarry.

Those who live in Lanzarote have grown to love their volcanoes -Manrique built his house among the heat-seared rock, hollowing out living spaces under the surface - the ultimate bachelor pad with leather sofas and lava-blackened walls.

Nature is king on Lanzarote - and nowhere is this more obvious than in the Timanfaya National Park, where fields of black rock stretch as far as the eye can see, interrupted only by the sweep of volcanic craters and the occasional struggling cactus, desperate to inject a drop of colour into the monochrome moonscapes.

The volcanoes are dormant now, but their power remains on show; a guide will pour water into a hole that shoots out as steam ten seconds later, and the chef in the Manrique-designed restaurant cooks his chicken and sausages on a grill that sits over an open hole that tunnels down to the molten rocks below.

There's plenty about Lanzarote that is unique, but equally there is plenty that seems horribly familiar. The seafront English pubs offer Strongbow and Stella and are dotted with TVs showing Man United v Arsenal. At Puerto del Carmen there is even a bar called Ye Olde Spanish Inn. But, contrary to popular belief, the beaches are long and sandy and, though they may be crammed with sunloungers and the whitewashed streets may lack a certain atmosphere, they are ideal for a cheap week in the sun.